


penumbra

by alcibiades



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, just the usual stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 03:50:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15877941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcibiades/pseuds/alcibiades
Summary: When he was young—between the ages of eight and eleven, hovering on the brink of puberty —he used to have these dreams. The proper term for them, he has since learned, was night terrors, a common occurrence among children at the onset of adolescence. He would wake struck by the most profound sense of fear but found himself unable to remember what could possibly have caused it. And sometimes later he remembered the dreams, but they were just that—dreams, distant and distinctly removed from reality. It was mostly the fear that he remembered, sharp and clear as a cold knife against the skin.





	penumbra

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for the Not Without You anthology prior to the release of Black Panther and Infinity War.

When he was young—between the ages of eight and eleven, hovering on the brink of puberty —he used to have these dreams. The proper term for them, he has since learned, was night terrors, a common occurrence among children at the onset of adolescence. He would wake struck by the most profound sense of fear but found himself unable to remember what could possibly have caused it. And sometimes later he remembered the dreams, but they were just that—dreams, distant and distinctly removed from reality. It was mostly the fear that he remembered, sharp and clear as a cold knife against the skin.

He had to get it under control; sometimes he screamed, or yelled, or got out of bed during the terrors, and his family couldn’t afford to have the girls up in the night. It took too long to get them back in bed. Maybe the worst part was that, being a mechanism of his subconscious, it was nearly impossible to control. He could remember desperately trying to will himself not to dream as he lay in bed at night, but all the strength of will in the world didn't help. Not much helped at all except sheer exhaustion and the passage of time; the dreams became less frequent as he got older.

It didn’t really matter how far he left them in the past, though. He remembered that sensation of waking so clearly: a shock, like being reborn into a cruel and foreign world.

Much later, he wondered if some part of him had known. If his mind was somehow trying to prepare him. Even when they tried to take his memories—the feeling of waking was so familiar.

#

In Bucharest, he became nobody. For almost anyone else, it would have been profoundly difficult to be nobody. But for him, it was a relatively simple matter: Avoid visiting the same places often enough to become familiar. Be polite but not overtly friendly. Don’t be memorable to anyone.

It worked well enough—he was, after all, nobody’s son, nobody’s brother, nobody’s lover, nobody’s friend. The years with Hydra had taught him to be nothing but a well-worn and well-handled tool. For a while, it was a relief. He could fool himself that his obligations were to nobody but himself, and if he was nobody too, it almost meant that his footstep in the world was invisible, unreal, like a print in sand washed away by waves.

It was only when the memories really started to come back that the profound impossibility of being nobody truly hit.

#

Being in stasis was not the same as being asleep. Sleep was something, whereas cryo was nothing. He didn't dream while he was in cryo, or if he did, his brain didn’t process the dreams in such a way that he could remember them when he woke. When they brought him out of stasis, if he was physically cognizant enough, it was almost like no time had passed at all. Like he had closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them again onto an entirely different world.

After the last time they wiped him, once his nervous system had had enough time to begin to repair itself, reconnecting neural connections that had been forcibly severed over and over, he started to dream again. The dreams were vivid and relentless, as if to make up for the many years without.

He was in Mexico, in the summer, an abandoned house with wax paper over the windows and a pack of hungry stray dogs that roamed outside and greeted anyone who wandered too close with a cacophony of barking. The air was stiflingly hot at night, and so still that he had taken to sleeping naked on the cooler cement of the cracked floor.

It didn't matter how hot he was when he finally fell asleep; in the dreams he was always cold. And he was always someone else, someone he could remember being, vaguely, but the chasm between that person and whoever he was now was so wide as to be unfathomable. A little boy dressed up in his Sunday clothes on his way to church, his foot lifted over a puddle and staring down at his own reflection. The dusting of freckles across his nose and the stubborn set of his dimpled chin. The sheen of his freshly-polished shoes.The little boy's mother, her voice sharp with annoyance—“Don’t you step in that puddle, young man!”— and her hand, dry and calloused, reaching to pull him forward.

The girls who had once been his sisters—they were less distinct, but somehow felt more true at the same time, like a cloud of white cotton, dark wavy hair, and high, fluting laughter. His father was little more than a tall, dark shadow on the periphery.

He was older next, relatively taller, walking through a snowy street up to a tenement building, climbing slippery wooden stairs and letting himself into an apartment that smelled like liniment and maybe onions. Finding another boy in bed, wrapped up in a thin, tangled sheet and radiating fever heat. He touched the boy's shoulder, and the boy turned over, opening red-rimmed, watery blue eyes, and said, “Bucky.”

“I brought your books,” his dream self said. “Thought if you were feeling up to it, I’d help you catch up.”

And it ended there, as abruptly as someone tearing a page out of a journal. A dog barked outside, and then a chorus of others joined it. He sat up, pulled on his pants, and went to the window, peeling back a loose corner of the paper and looking out. He couldn't see any people, and after a while a ragged-looking coyote yipped and wheeled off, and the barking stopped.

He went back and sat in the corner, wiping sweat from his forehead and where it had gathered in the hollows of his eyes and throat. The boy’s voice echoed in his head, Bucky, and he thought to himself that he would prefer the dreams of violence to this. He knew what he was capable of, and in those dreams, at least his hands felt like his own.

#

“What’s your name?” someone asked him.

He shook his head, the words rattling around meaninglessly in his mind. There was water dripping from his nose and the ends of his hair—cold water that dripped in the same ceaseless pattern as the shivers wracking his body.

They had him under the arms. Two strong men, one on either side, their grip on his arms bruising. His feet were skidding against the floor, trying to hold him, but his knees kept buckling, unable to take his whole weight. Within a few seconds, he became aware that the men were holding him so tightly because they were struggling to take his weight.

They pushed him into a chair, and one of them came around to the front of it. “Look at me,” the man said—that must have been the same one who asked him the first time. It was the same voice. He tried, but his eyes couldn't focus. It was all just a blur. Dark, light, the pink of flesh.

“Acknowledge the command, soldier.” The man’s voice echoed faintly, muffled as if being heard underwater.

“Acknowledged,” he said. The word came up from somewhere very deep inside, an answer hooked and then pulled ceaselessly out. A pattern of fat, dark water spots had formed on the floor beneath his bare feet. Slowly, it gathered into a puddle. He looked at the man again, and the blur of the man's face had clarified into something more recognizable. It was enough, at least, that he could feign making eye contact.

“What’s your name?” the man repeated, slower this time. Space between his words.

Even in this state, he knew he should have an answer. A name was something that all people had, and he had been called soldier, and a soldier was a person. Beyond that, there was a faint knowledge that he did have a name, but the specifics were so far away.

He didn’t say anything.

“I’m gonna need more than that,” the man said. He had eyes now. Dark eyes, the sclera very clear. “I need an actual answer.”

“I don’t know.” His throat was dry despite the puddle forming at his feet, and his voice was thin and hoarse.

“You don’t know your name?”

The soldier shook his head.

“Good,” said the man. “That means we’re coming along nicely.” He stepped back, out of the soldier’s range of clear vision. A shock of cold metal clanked shut around the soldier’s wrists, and he sat back in the chair, tilting his chin up into the gleam of the fluorescent lights overhead. It was suddenly familiar.

Ah, he thought. That's it.

#

He started writing it down, eventually, as it came back to him. Other than when deliberately erased, his memory had never been suspect, but it gave him the slimmest sense of satisfaction to write it down, and seeing it on paper made it feel more substantial.

Sometimes it was just a glimpse. Other times a whole sequence of hours, a conversation, even a day. He was disciplined about it; no matter what he was doing, he made sure to stop and pull out his notebook, put it all down while the memory was fresh. If he’d learned anything, it was that details were important. Details were what made something real.

He filled the first notebook, mostly inane stuff: sketches of bullet trajectories, the smell of fresh cotton candy, the black of gunpowder burnt into the creases of his right pointer knuckle. And he started on a second, and a third, until eventually the backpack full of notebooks was the only constant in the ragtag collection he called his belongings.

There were a lot of pieces there. Some of them were even things that had meant a lot to the person he’d been before. But the thing was, a person wasn’t a puzzle. Even with all those pieces, he couldn’t put them together in such a way to understand who he was now.

#

It took him several long, agonizing moments to be able to open his eyes. And even after he had managed, everything was just white and black, too bright, one more kind of pain on top of all the rest.

He couldn’t remember what had happened, just fear, and beneath it, the certainty that he was going to die. He couldn’t move, except to blink occasionally. The pain he felt was so all-encompassing and profound that there was no way to describe it; it was the sort of thing you could understand only from experience.

He tried to open his mouth, to say something, to call for help, but all he could manage was an incoherent gurgle around the hot, thick blood in his mouth. He didn’t even know if he was breathing. I’m dead, he thought. I’m dead, and this is hell.

The thought caused a new sort of ache, one that wasn’t tied to any specific part of his body. If he was dead—and he had to be—and this was hell, he wouldn’t see Steve again. Steve was still alive, and there wasn’t a chance Steve was going to hell. He could wait and wait, but he’d never, ever see Steve again, because when he died, Steve would be in heaven.

And Bucky’d be—here. When he managed to blink, his eyelashes stuck together. Frozen, he realized. It was cold. Deeply cold. He would have laughed if he could—he wanted to laugh. It was inside him, somewhere between all his broken ribs. A tremor of sorts, but he couldn’t get it out, just bubbles of viscous snot and blood from his nose and mouth.

The irony didn’t escape him, though. He was in hell, and it wasn’t hot at all; it was cold. Steve would have a laugh too, Bucky thought, if only he could see it.

#

Bucky came around the corner fast, skidding against the slippery stone floor, but stopped just as soon as he heard Sister Benedetta’s voice. Instead of her, though, he saw the skinny boy with the mended shoes, standing stiff as a board, with his chin tucked in defensively. He’d been seeing the kid around lately, and wasn’t sure where he’d come from. Wherever it was, he seemed to have brought a storm front in with him, and Sister Benedetta was only the latest in the parade of people this kid had managed to piss off in the couple of weeks since Bucky had first seen him.

He cut a pretty sorry figure, with the heel of one of his shoes ground flat enough that it gave him a crooked posture even from the back, and his shirt washed so many times it was practically see-through thin. Especially next to Benedetta, who was taller than all the other nuns, and had jet-black eyebrows which Bucky personally thought gave her a resemblance more to Satan himself than any angel in the heavenly rankings. But the kid was just standing there and taking the dressing-down, his hands balled into fists so tightly that they’d turned clammy white.

About thirty seconds in, Bucky couldn’t take it anymore. Sister Benedetta was doing that thing where she talked very quietly, which meant she was really mad. He stepped out from around the corner deliberately loud, put his hands in his pockets, started a cheerful whistle. “Hiya, Sister Benedetta,” he said, coming up beside the kid and giving him a friendly nudge with one elbow. “Hey, you ready to go? My ma’ll be mad if we keep her waiting.”

“Hello, James,” Benedetta said, her eyebrows maintaining their position in a ferocious scowl. “I’m sorry, do you know this young man?”

“Oh yeah,” Bucky said. “I’m his friend. Is it all right if we go? We’re having him over for dinner, and you know my ma always likes help with the washing up.”

Benedetta’s expression darkened for a moment, and then relaxed. “Very well. We’ll see you on Sunday, Mr. Barnes. Give my best to your mother.”

“‘Course,” said Bucky. “You know her, wouldn’t miss Mass for the world. Well, we’ll see you later, Sister Benedetta. You have a good evening.”

He put his arm around the skinny kid’s shoulders and half-dragged him away before the Sister could change her mind and decide she wanted to get into a conversation about Bucky’s ma, or his sisters, or his studies, or anything like that. The kid was squirmy and uncooperative, and Bucky barely managed to get him out the front door before he threw Bucky’s arm off and brushed himself down like Bucky had gotten something nasty on him. “I didn’t need your help,” he said, staring at Bucky just as fiercely as Bucky had ever seen Sister Benedetta stare at any poor sinner.

“Uh, sure,” Bucky said. “All right, my mistake, then. But trust me, you don’t want to get into it with Sister Benedetta. Mrs. MacCarthy, Tom Murphy, that’s one thing. But she’s another thing entirely.”

“Thanks for the advice,” the kid said, sounding for all the world like he was cussing Bucky out. “But I don’t need a friend.”

Bucky squinted at him. “It sure seems like you do,” he said. “Anyway, I’m Bucky. Do you want to come over for dinner? If I bring somebody new home, Ma’ll be grateful—it’ll keep the girls distracted. Out of her hair. She’s making corned beef and cabbage.”

The kid kept staring at Bucky, his eyelashes quivering as if he was too stubborn to even blink. “Okay,” he said finally, and started walking like he knew what direction Bucky’s house was. “I’m Steve, by the way.”

Bucky waited until Steve had gone past him to roll his eyes. “Great to meet you,” he said.

#

“Real man of the people you are,” Bucky said. “Promoting camaraderie and a sense of brotherhood with your soldiers, eh?” He sat down next to Steve, shifting the shield out the way so it leaned up against the trunk of a tree.

Steve laughed blearily. He hadn’t changed out of his Captain America rags, and he smelled like blood and smoke. Ironically, Bucky couldn’t see much of the evidence on him; the red and blue of the outfit did a pretty good job hiding it. But he could smell it—seemed like he could always smell it these days—and he didn’t think it was a smell he was likely to forget anytime soon. “I just needed a minute,” said Steve.

“Sure.” Bucky looked over, craning his neck, but Steve had his face mostly covered with one hand. “You all right?”

“Of course I am,” said Steve, and then, “I’m not hurt.”

Bucky smiled a little; it wasn’t what he’d been asking, and Steve knew it, but that was the only right answer, wasn’t it? “You were good out there,” he said.

“You were too.” Steve’s voice was muffled. “I’m glad—” he cut himself off, and then said, “This is all still real strange sometimes.”

Bucky glanced over his shoulder, back toward camp. He could still see the silhouettes of the rest of the men, lit up by the lamplight, and could hear the mixed timbre of their voices as they laughed and talked. “Just sometimes?” he asked, putting his hand on Steve’s shoulder, his thumb covering a smear of blood that started on the collar of Steve’s uniform and ended on the tender skin of his neck.

“Only when I have a second to stop and think about it.” Steve shifted, uncovering his face, and looked over at Bucky. He was right; it was strange. Looking at his face, he was still so clearly Steve, but he’d changed so much that there were angles from which Bucky almost couldn’t recognize him.

“You ever think sometimes you’d rather be back hawking war bonds and dancing in tights?” Bucky asked. It got the desired reaction: Steve grinned, a real smile.

“No,” Steve said. “Not for a second.” He paused, the smile melting off his face, and for just a moment Bucky could see him exactly as he had been before, the hollows lurking under his eyes, and the waning light sharpening his features. “Sometimes I miss Steve Rogers, though.”

“He’s still here,” Bucky said. “Trust me, I know the guy. You couldn’t get rid of him if you tried.”

Steve smiled again, but it was only a ghost of the first smile. “Guess you’re right,” he said. His eyes unfocused for a second, like he was looking into the middle distance, and then focused on Bucky again. Bucky was glad he’d had a chance to get used to being stared at by Steve, because sometimes Steve’s focus was so strong that being the object of it was uncomfortably like being physically touched.

“Something on my face?” Bucky said after a few seconds—after he’d had enough of it.

“Yeah, actually,” Steve said. “Right here.” He reached out, and his thumb swiped over the highest point of Bucky’s cheekbone. And then he grabbed Bucky’s nose.

Bucky slapped his hand away. “Fuck off with that,” he said, laughing. Steve laughed too; he stood up, offering Bucky a hand, and Bucky got up too. And back they went, to join the rest of the men.

#

Steve’s open mouth was hot as a brand against Bucky’s hip. He’d stayed tensely awake the entire flight back from Siberia to Wakanda and through being shown to the guest quarters, and had even managed to get cleaned up. He’d sat down next to Bucky on the bed and looked at him like he had something important to say, but couldn’t for the world figure out where to start. And five minutes later, he’d fallen asleep, slumping over and down.

That Steve still felt safe enough around Bucky to just let his guard down like that was—it was something. Bucky reached down and smoothed his thumb along Steve’s hairline, looking at Steve’s sleep-flushed face, the peace of his expression despite the evidence of conflict that bruised it.

Steve stirred, his eyes slitting open. “It’s okay,” Bucky said. He didn’t know how long it had been since Steve slept, but he knew how long it had been since he himself had slept, and it was on the upper limits of acceptable. “It’s just me. Go back to sleep.”

Steve’s eyes remained open a sliver, his gaze shifting. “Does it hurt?” he asked.

He shrugged. It did, but in a familiar and bearable way. The nerves connecting his shoulder to his arm had long since gone dull, and the pain of physical injury was something he’d learned to sublimate decades ago. What was strange was being without the sheer weight of the arm; it had become a part of him, sometimes the only part that he truly felt was his own. 

Steve closed his eyes again, but only for a moment. When he opened them, his expression had changed completely from the peace of sleep. “I’m sorry,” he said, abruptly and full of feeling.

Bucky put his thumb on Steve’s eyebrow, smoothing it as if he could wipe away the frown. “You don’t have to be sorry,” he said.

“I am,” said Steve. “I just—I just wanted you back, I wanted—” He stopped, turning his face against Bucky’s stomach, his hand clenching in the fabric of the shirt the Wakandans had given Bucky to wear. He didn’t say anything else, but Bucky could feel him breathing raggedly. It was funny—throughout the entire ordeal, Steve had avoided touching him, or even being near him for too long. Like he needed to keep himself separate, whether as a reminder to himself or everyone else, Bucky didn’t know. Captain America could want to see justice done for a mistreated captive, but it was entirely Steve Rogers who wanted his friend back and was willing to go through hell or high water to get there.

“I know,” Bucky said. “I know.” The impossibility of Steve ever really getting his friend back was a discussion for a later time.

“It’s been so long,” Steve said. “I mean, since they found me and woke me up, it feels like it’s been so much longer than it really has. Everyone acts like they know so much about me, but nobody remembers, and—” he stopped, going very still for a moment. “Sorry,” he said. “This is really stupid, I should stop.”

“No,” Bucky said. “Keep going. It’s been a long time since anyone wanted to just talk to me.”

“Everyone wants to talk to me,” Steve said. “It’s like they’re all waiting for me to say something profound.”

Bucky snorted, and the snort startled a laugh out of Steve. “I know,” said Steve. “And then I’m—I’m always standing around trying to look like I’m thinking something important, and really I’m trying to think of something appropriate for Captain America to say.”

“I think you’re doing okay,” Bucky said.

Steve shifted, looking at Bucky with profound skepticism. “I think I’m doing terrible,” he said. “You saw what just happened, right?”

“It really hasn’t been that long if you still haven’t learned you can’t stop other people from being assholes.” Bucky smoothed his hand over Steve’s hair.

“It hasn’t been long,” Steve said. “It hasn’t, honestly, a few years, except—it’s been a lifetime, you know?

“I know,” Bucky said. “I know.”

“You were hiding from me.” Steve shifted, sighing. “At first, I didn’t get it. But you were trying to protect me, weren’t you? That was why you li—you said you didn’t remember.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said. He looked away for a moment, at the elegantly simple decor of the room, the view out the window of the city, and the mountains beyond it like a gaping maw full of sharp teeth. “I was trying to protect you. You know, I had this idea that it was supposed to get easier because you were Captain America. Not harder.”

Steve gave a rueful laugh, half-muffled by Bucky’s pants. “If you thought that, I’m not the only one who hasn’t learned anything.”

Bucky chuckled. “Aren’t we a pair,” he said. “Two ninety-year olds who still haven’t learned a lick of common sense. And they say wisdom comes with old age.”

“They do say that,” Steve agreed. He went silent again after that, and Bucky leaned back against the headboard, assuming Steve was falling asleep. But when he looked down at Steve sprawled out with his hand clutching Bucky’s knee and his head in Bucky’s lap, Steve’s eyes were wide open.

#

Cold in the mountains. All in black and white, a scene that seemed familiar but strangely without context. The weight of his rifle against his back—that was familiar, an old friend, a chilly comfort.

He had the high ground and an optimal vantage point for the route his target was taking between the airport and the remote ski lodge. This was a vacation: a prior version of the soldier would have noted that the ski lodge was the sort of place one might go for peace and quiet, to retreat from the turmoil of daily life. But this current version had no room for such observations; he was not, after all, required to empathize with the targets. Only to eliminate them.

He set up the rifle and waited, with the wind whistling and singing around his ears. The car appeared in his scope well within the normal time frame, and he readied himself, going still and steady. Anyone who had been trained to shoot knew that you had to count your breaths, to be precise and careful. It was only truly gifted snipers for whom the rifle became like an extension of themselves. Like a phantom limb, he could feel it breathing with him.

The target was not alone in the car. There were a woman and two children with him. The soldier sat back, pulled out his radio. But he couldn’t raise anyone, just crackling static almost swallowed by the chill of the air.

He went back to the outpost to use the radio there instead; the outpost itself was little more than a shack, but equipped with more powerful tech than his handheld unit. As he tuned the dials, the static resolved into silence, and then, when they recognized the frequency he was calling from, his handler’s voice said, “Report.”

“There was a complication,” he said.

“What do you mean, a complication?” She paused. “This is a straightforward mission—”

“Presence of additional civilians in target car,” the soldier said, quickly.

Silence, for a moment. Then: “Collateral damage. You ought to know this by now.”

“Acknowledged,” said the soldier. “Mission proceeding as ordered.” He hung the handset up and went out into the cold.

By the time he had made it back to the road, the car was long gone. The ski lodge was not an optimal place to complete the assignment. Even waiting until nightfall, it lit up the surrounding area in a cheery yellow glow, and it sat near the top of the mountain, an area clear of trees. It was small, but still populated by other guests and staff—potential witnesses.

Even silenced, the gunshot would be too loud. He waited until the light in the target’s room flickered out, then stole up to the window, unsheathed a knife, and jimmied the latch until he could ease the window open.

It was dim and warm inside the room, filled only with the sound of sleeping breath. If he could eliminate the target and leave without waking any of the rest of them, there would be no witnesses. No need for collateral damage.

He put his hand over the target’s mouth. The knife went in smoothly, and hot blood spilled over his hand, soaking into his glove and sleeve. The target shook a little, his throat jumping beneath the soldier’s hand, and then went still, lapsing into unconsciousness. The soldier stepped back.

The glint of the woman’s eyes met his in the darkness, wide and wet. “Who are you?” she gasped.

#

The streets had all gone narrow and dark, culminating in inky pits of blackness as though they were all dead-end alleys. He tried to run, but his feet were heavy, as if the ground was trying to suck him down. He didn’t know what he was running from, just that he was suffused by a stifling dread, that something was chasing him, and he couldn’t let it catch him.

It seemed familiar—it seemed just like his neighborhood, except that he had no idea where he was or where he was going. Every corner he turned in an attempt to find home just led him down another labyrinthine passage of buildings that looked the same. No lit windows, nobody walking outside.

His breath came in heaving gasps, the air stinging his lungs and his chest tight. He wanted to call out for somebody—anybody—but couldn’t draw enough breath to do anything other than wheeze.

Ahead of him, there was a flash of motion from around one of the corners. “Hey!” he called weakly, bending over and putting his hands on his knees for a moment, head down. “Hey, wait up!”

The top of a blonde head, hair glinting silver in the moonlight. Steve. “Steve!” Bucky forced his aching legs into movement again, the toes of his shoes scuffing and dragging against the ground. He had to catch Steve, had to tell him—

He went around the corner after Steve, but only just in time to see Steve’s too-big shoes disappearing around the next corner, his shoelaces flying. He could hear the clack-clack of Steve’s feet, but it sounded like Steve was getting further and further away with every step. “Steve, wait!” Bucky cried desperately.

Rounding the next corner brought him face to face with a dead end: just a black pit, Steve nowhere in sight. And as he stood there, looking wildly around, sweat running into his eyes and his heart pounding, the darkness seeped toward him, reaching out with tendrils like shadowy hands.

“Where are you?” he cried. But the windows were all closed, and now the darkness was coming for him, wrapping itself around his ankles and pulling him inexorably toward it. And it crept up and up, smothering him, as hot as a wool blanket on a warm day, as thick as the damp air in the height of summer. Into his mouth, his eyes, until all he could see was black, black—

“Bucky,” said his ma. Her warm hand on his forehead, the other one untangling him from his blanket. “Wake up, Bucky, you’re having a dream.”

He opened his eyes. She was looking down at him, lines of concern drawn around her eyes and mouth. “You’ve been calling out,” she said. “We don’t want to wake the girls up, do we?”

Bucky blinked, wiping his damp face. “No,” he said. “No, sorry.”

“It’s all right, my darling,” his mother said, her thumb stroking his forehead right at the hairline. “Was it a scary dream? What was it about?”

Beneath the covers, Bucky’s heart still jackhammered in his chest. “Nothing,” he said. “It was nothing.”

#

The shock of waking. Everything was blurry and too bright, and he was cold and wet, gasping for air. Someone was touching him, and he pushed at their hands. No, no, no, he thought, choking on the water dripping into his mouth and nose. No, no.

The hands came back, one on his face, one on his shoulder. He realized that his left arm was gone, and—had it all been a dream? Had all of that been—not real? He jerked away, but the hands followed. “Bucky,” said a voice. “Bucky, it’s okay, it’s just me. I’m right here.”

Steve. Bucky blinked rapidly, and the world came into focus gradually, like a developing photograph. Steve was looking at him, concerned, his thumb stroking the side of Bucky’s face. The other people in the room stood back at a distance, as if they were waiting. “Bucky?” said Steve.

“Where am I?” Bucky shuddered all over, leaning into Steve’s touch. “What’s going on?”

“You’re in Wakanda.” Steve’s hands were steady, warm. “Do you remember?”

The word Wakanda triggered something in Bucky’s mind, and it all flooded back to him. He sat up a little, wiping his hair back out of his face. “I remember,” he said. “I remember.”

#

“I used to have these dreams when I was a kid,” said Bucky, putting his hands in his pockets. They’d given him a new left arm; it sort of looked like the old one, but a warmer tone, more of a platinum than a silver, and altogether sleeker in design. They had told him they could make it look just like his right arm if he wanted, but—he didn’t. There was no sense in pretending.

“Yeah?” said Steve, looking up at the purple-bellied rain clouds that threatened overhead, and then back at Bucky. “What kind of dreams?”

“They were nightmares,” Bucky said. “Night terrors, I guess. I used to get them a lot, and I’d wake up yelling or crying.”

“I never knew that.” Steve stilled, turning toward Bucky. He reached out and put his hand on Bucky’s forearm. “What were they about?”

“Different things,” Bucky said. After a few seconds, he took his hand out of his pocket, turned it over, and offered it to Steve. Steve stared at it, looking bewildered, so Bucky reached over and laced his fingers through Steve’s. “I don’t know. Sometimes it was just like reality, except I couldn’t talk, or sometimes I could talk, but people couldn’t hear me. Sometimes I’d dream about my ma dying, or the girls. Sometimes I’d dream people were trying to hurt me. Sometimes it was just—darkness, but I couldn’t escape.”

Steve nodded, his eyes fixed on his fingers where they were entwined with Bucky’s. “I never told anyone about it,” Bucky said. “I don’t know if I was embarrassed, or just—what’s the point, you know, if there’s nothing to be done about it.”

“But you’re telling me now,” Steve said.

“Yeah.” Bucky nodded, a few loose strands of hair falling forward into his face. “I started to wonder after a while if it was—if some part of me knew what was gonna happen, and that part of me was trying to prepare me for it.”

“Bucky,” Steve said, sounding like his heart was breaking. “You were just a kid.”

“So were you,” Bucky said. “So was everybody. Hell, even in the war—we were all just kids. Sometimes I just—I don’t know why I keep coming back so many times. I mean, I’ve lost track of it, how many times I’ve just woken up, and I don’t know who I am, or what’s going on. And I think after a while, I just stopped trying to figure it out.”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “Yeah, I think I know what you mean.”

Bucky squared his shoulders. “Anyway, I know—I know it’s not something anybody can tell me, but I just want to ask you a question, and I want you to just answer it. No arguing, no giving me that look, I just want you to tell me the truth, because of any goddamn person on the planet I ought to be able to trust you to do that.” He craned his neck, forcing Steve to meet his eyes. “Can you do that for me?”

Steve’s grip tightened on Bucky’s fingers. “Yeah,” he said. “Yes, I can do that.”

Bucky just looked at Steve for a long few seconds. The grey light of the sky turned Steve’s eyes an eerie almost-lavender, and gazing into them, Bucky could see for a moment all the years of pain and uncertainty that had hardened Steve into the rock he’d become. But somewhere in there he could still see the boy, too, hiding his tender underbelly behind a shield of defiance, and he wondered if Steve could see the same thing, looking back at him—or if it was just a mess of broken mirror shards.

“Who am I?” he asked.

Steve’s expression went uncertain and confused for a moment, but it was only a moment before it settled into the familiar mien of determination: jaw set, brow slightly furrowed, chin up. He used the hand joined with Bucky’s to pull them together, until Bucky’s chin was resting in the cradle between his neck and shoulder. He leaned close, and Bucky could feel Steve’s warm breath against his cheek and ear.

“You’re Bucky,” said Steve.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Penumbra](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19221124) by [sallysparrow017](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sallysparrow017/pseuds/sallysparrow017)




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